I'll Be Home for Christmas
by seriousblahblah
Summary: Anthony Goldstein/Hermione. With his roots in New York and his heart in England, Andy must deal with a hate crime against his family while remembering his heart and the wedding ring he carries in his pocket for when he returns. But will Anthony Goldstein be able to find or solve this hate crime, or will he let hate overshadow his heart? ( Hiatus til next christmas/Channukah)
1. Departure

_It's A/N -Written for hillstar's Hanukkah challenge. I will use several prompts but right now the basis is going to be the underdog theme. [(Underdog): One of the reasons Hanukkah is considered a miracle is because the Macabees prevailed against the much larger and seemingly stronger Greek-Syrian army. -Write about some person or group of people who win in a contest against a seemingly bigger or stronger opponent.] This is the first time I write Anthony Goldstein, a Ravenclaw character, so the personality I give him is all my own interpretation. Anthony was only given a few sentences in the books._

 _Also, given the recent rise in hate crimes in the news lately, I decided to incorporate a bit of that here. May anyone who has been the victim of hate lately be protected :-)_

 _._

* * *

 **I'll Be Home for Christmas**

 _ **Anthony Goldstein/Hermione Granger**_

.

Hermione snuggled up to the warm, fleece sweater of her boyfriend, Anthony Goldstein.

"Please come home soon, Andy."

"I'll be fine." He reassured her, wrapping his arms around her waist and plucking at one of her frizzy locks of hair.

"I know. But I'm still worried," she murmured into his chest.

Anthony chuckled quietly, the sound low and rumbling against her ear as she pressed it up against his heartbeat. She lived for this: to hear his heartbeat each day, to see his smile, to be by his side. She needed him more than she could say.

"Hermione, I need you to stay here. I can't have you fighting all my battles. Someone attacked my family and I need to know who it is."

Hermione felt the old fury, of the argument they'd been having these past 3 days, storm up inside her. Yet she held back arguing with him: it seemed Anthony was determined to take care of this family issue on his own. Whether she wanted to help or not, he wouldn't accept her interference.

Her pushed back one of her curls from her face and kissed her forehead.

His jaw and lips had set in a determined, unhappy line as his blue eyes studied her.

"I know you've fought in several battles and wars, Hermione, and want to help. But you don't understand how my family is and that they don't want outside interference. I'll have to take care of this on my own."

Hermione felt tears prick at her eyes, but she held them back. "Why can't your family trust me?"

Andy chuckled. "They do, they love you. But you don't understand what it's like for my family. My mother's side of the family is both Jewish and muggle. They just want to keep this within the family."

"But you already told me what happened," Hermione pleaded, trying to reach out to him without starting another argument. He'd already told her that he wasn't going to fight with her about it anymore.

Anthony's young face suddenly became very grim and pale. "Hermione, they were victims of a hate crime. You don't really understand what that's like do you?"

Hermione's cheeks flushed red and she tried to quell her temper. "Of course, I do. I'm Muggleborn. I've been attacked and insulted many times because of my ancestry. Of course, I know what it's like Anthony–"

He grabbed her hand and shook his head. "Then you'll know they just want to keep this quiet right now until they find the perpetrators. If famous Hermione Granger were seen to be sleuthing around, it would be a dead give away, that it's under investigation." He paused to raise her hand and kiss the skin of her palm. "Trust me."

"I could Polyjuice, I could go with you–"

He began to walk away from her, towards the door. "No, Hermione, and that's final."

Hermione resisted the urge to scream at him, Anthony Goldstein could be so stubborn sometimes and set in his ways. He thought because he was half-blood and Jewish that Hermione couldn't understand him but she did. But whenever she tried to show that, he would shut down the conversation.

"I've got to go now," he said at the door before blowing her a kiss and walking off into the cold, wintry outdoors. Briefly, she watched him from the window before she heard the pop of apparition and her boyfriend disappeared.

Why couldn't he trust her to help? Why was his family so insular and protective?

Hermione just wished she could understand, though given that the people of Israel had learned to be a minority over thousands of years, perhaps there was something about Anthony Goldstein's family she would never understand. Perhaps, even being Muggleborn, she'd never understand what it meant to carry the blood of slaves and scapegoats through millennia. Hermione wasn't sure.

So she padded, as she often did when searching for answers, to the library.

 _I just hope he comes back soon._

Tomorrow was Christmas.

She stared vacantly at their mantelpiece where both a menorah and a small Christmas tree hung side and side. _Channakah_ Andy had called it.

"Please come back here, Andy," she whispered to herself.

.

* * *

Anthony Goldstein appeared with a loud pop of apparition in the abandoned area of an old New York neighbourhood. He turned around surreptitiously to make sure no muggles had seen him appear, before he thumbed his wand securely beneath his sleeve.

As he took footsteps through the cold, deep snow, he kept darting glances behind him and tucked his long, black coat closer to him to keep out the wind.

His long hair fell into his eyes and Anthony grimaced briefly as he remembered how his mother would complain about how long his hair had grown. While his father was a wizard, his mother was very much a muggle and was still not used to seeing some of the longer wizard hair styles that men wore.

Well, to fit in better with the muggle neighbourhood, he waved his wand briefly over his head to put a glamour on it. To the outside world now, it looked like he was an ordinary muggle man, with short cut hair, in a long black coat.

They had no idea he was a wizard and was on the hunt for the hate-criminals who spray painted and attacked his Aunt Freda's home.

He would find them. And deal them out justice quietly.

.

* * *

"Auntie Ruth," he greeted his family in between a bombardment of hugs and appraisals of how handsome and well-dressed he was and 'whenever was he going to settle down and get married with a good Jewish girl.' Apparently, his mum had still not told half the family that he was dating a gentile witch. Perhaps, secretly, his mother still hoped he'd change his mind and go back to his roots, but Andy had serious doubts of this. Hermione was the one he loved.

"How is Aunt Freda and Uncle Gary doing?" he asked, noticing they were the only ones missing from the family gathering.

His mother and Aunt Ruth immediately piped up and spoke over each other in loud voices to tell him the news. "They haven't wanted to go anywhere since the vandalism, they are cooped up. But I've told them time and time again to move out of that area, it's no good!"

Andy grimaced, his jaw clenching involuntarily. While he didn't think it was a bad idea for his Aunt and Uncle to move out of a hostile area, he'd rather not give the racists what they wanted: evicting the only Jews out of all gentile area. No, a better justice would be to find the culprits and chase them out. Magic might help there. If his family left the neighbourhood they'd lived in for most of their life, that would be giving the racists who vandalized their house exactly what they wanted. An eviction.

"I'll find them," he said quietly.

His mum tutted. "Uh uh uh, you are not going anywhere til you sit down and eat and spend a little time with your father and me first. Where is your sense of family and duty?!"

"I'm here aren't I?" Andy snapped, thinking back to how he left Hermione alone back in England. Perhaps he should've brought her after all, though more than likely Hermione would just worry and then his family would turn his entire visit on its head by pestering him with questions about her. He coughed. "Where's dad?"

"Upstairs, watching Jeopardy on the telly,"

Andy sighed. His father was a wizard but as he got into old-age, his father was starting to act and live more like a muggle. Perhaps under his mother's domineering influence.

.

* * *

Back in England, Hermione watched the news. She'd been trying to read about history but she couldn't concentrate. Not when she felt like history was happening all over again.

She switched through several wizarding and muggle newspapers and tv stations.

She noticed the rise in hate crimes in both the muggle world. The war had just finished in the wizarding one, but hate never seemed to completely disappear did it?

Her eyes glazed over as she heard about several attacks on minority neighbourhoods in the UK and in America. It seemed that hate was rising.

She bit her lip. Why had Andy insisted on going without her? What was he trying to hide from her?

She felt more worried than ever about what was going on in America.

.

.

* * *

a/n: This will be a 3 part story.


	2. Missing Him and An Unexpected Floo-Call

[Prompts used: (Dreidel) The game of dreidel is played by spinning a top that lands on the letters Gimel, Hey, Nun, or Shin. Gimel stands for the first letter of "gants" (or "all" in Yiddish), Hey stands for "halb" ("half,") Nun stands for "nisht" and Shin stands for "shtel ayn" ("put in). Write about: Hey: Getting some, but not all, of what you want, or Shin: Making a sacrifice or enduring a loss. I'm not sure where Hermione and Anthony will get everything they want or have to suffer a bit first, but given that Hermione already suffered in the war and dating Ron, it might be closer to 'hey' but I think things will work out for her eventually]

* * *

Chapter 2: Missing Him

.

Andy had been gone exactly two hours and Hermione was already flanked by worry and missing him. What a pathetic mess, I've become, Hermione thought to herself, rubbing at her temples as she padded barefoot upstairs to the bathroom. She turned on the taps and tried to imagine Andy safe and well as he took the international portkey (two stops apparently to cross the Atlantic) before he apparated from the portkey station on Staten Island and to his destination in a little neighbourhood of New York. It should only take him about an hour to get there and back, yet likely Andy was going to stay for days until he solved the mystery.

Damn Andy. Always doing the right thing and as traditionally as possible. Hermione had the feeling that if Andy ever proposed to her – not that they were anywhere near that point, she hadn't even met most of his family yet – still, if, he ever did propose it would likely be done as traditional and old-fashioned as possible. Andy was just like that, old-fashioned. Probably had something to do with his upbringing. Hermione shook her head, god knows she loved him, yet she had a feeling Andy would take years, if not longer, to propose to her. He'd probably want to make sure everything was right and that she converted or worse, actually convinced him to make her convert, before he even thought about proposing.

 _I'll probably be waiting forever._

Even though sometimes Andy looked at her so intensely sometimes that she thought a proposal might be at the tip of his tongue – and yet he would hold back for some reason. Tradition perhaps.

 _Tradition. Tradition. Tradition._ Hermione was sometimes glad she'd been raised by two atheist doctors so she didn't have to deal with the types of dilemmas Andy did.

With that thought in mind, Hermione began undressing and glanced at herself in the mirror as she took off each layer of her warm, winter clothing.

 _What am I doing with myself?_ Hermione thought as she saw herself in the mirror and then her eyes lowered to her flat abdomen. She ran her hand over the flat, smooth line of her stomach. While career was important, she'd probably never carry a child at this point if she waited until she ascended to the top of the Ministry before having children. Dating Ron for several years had also been a waste of time. Not that she didn't love him, but she hadn't been getting any younger while Ron played around with betting on Quidditch and trying to reclaim the lost youth they'd missed in that year when they'd been chasing Horcruxes. Ron had always wanted to live in the past, while she was more concerned with the future.

And Andy? Andy just seemed completely obsessed with the present, and running his family's business.

Hermione was the only one that really seemed to care or worry that the future might not be as peaceful as everyone hoped. Just because one war had ended, didn't mean a new one couldn't begin. Which is why she was so vigilant to help create changes and Ministry reformations that would forestall a relapse into pre-war racism and totalitarian power gaps. It was why she was so busy trying to make wizarding society a just and fair one for everyone, including werewolves, house-elves and muggleborns – like herself. Not that she was so badly off anymore, considering she was both a muggleborn and a famous war heroine. The two things seemed to cancel each other out. Still, there were some people that wanted to make her fall doubly exactly for that reason. They didn't want a muggleborn to succeed.

Hermione tested a foot in the bathtub's water to feel that the temperature was right, before she slipped in and relaxed in the hot water. Stretching out an arm, she placed her wand at the bath's side before she reached out to grab a handful of bubblebath potion.

It was a habit of the war, that even in her warded home, she never left her wand out of sight.

Plus, it came in handy to magically sort out the knots and tangles in her hair when she was working shampoo and conditioner into her messy, lion-like mane of hair. She really could never understand how she could work so hard to comb and add straightening-potions to her hair, and yet hours later and whenever she woke up, it would be back to curly tangle of knots and frizzy volume again. _Magic,_ Andy said it must be. Her hair really had a mind of its own and did not like being straightened.

Still, Hermione appreciated whenever Andy had a go at her hair himself and tried to use his own wand to perform a straightening spell on it. It was funny to see a man, who cared nothing about hair or beauty products himself, try to help her. Though it did show he cared. Andy was like that. Caring and yet stubborn too. A bit like her hair. You couldn't change it no matter how you tried. Andy was Andy. Anthony Goldstein. Traditional, simple and honest. And a bit hard-headed too, despite being a Ravenclaw.

Dammit, she was missing him again. Yet why hadn't he Floo-called her? Surely, he could find a functioning fireplace in New York by now, couldn't he? Andy was a smart guy, why wouldn't he right?

Pull yourself together, Hermione. _He'll call soon._

Yet when she heard the Floo-Call in the living room go off, she was bolting out of the bathtub like a maniac and running, dripping wet and only covered with a towel, to answer the person in the fireplace.

Her mouth fell open, however, when she saw who it was; and it was not Andy's familiar, kind face staring at her out of the ashes of the fire.

.

.

* * *

a/n sorry for cliffhanger. it will continued in next chapter, as we move onto the crime mystery part of this story, though there will be romance and christmas-channukah fluff too. Thanks for reading!

Does anybody have any face cast/actor suggestions for who would be a good actor to play anthony goldstein?

.


End file.
